jdlayman:
patrickwilson:
On Sunday at church, I overheard someone(s) totally raging about how the healthcare reform was going to kill America, the public option would put large swaths of our country out of work, and would totes fund abortions for every man, woman and child, etc.
I’m like 95% sure that the first two points are grossly inaccurate, but the final point is absolutely ridiculous. The House bill that passed, according to the National Journal,
… adopted an amendment offered by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., Saturday to the overhaul bill that bans the public option from covering abortions and private insurers from providing abortion coverage to anyone who receives a federal subsidy. [Emphasis mine.]
Evangelicals, why the long faces? I guess my question—one of genuine curiosity—is why would Jesus vote no on healthcare reform, including the public option? Feel free to make an argument using the Bible as a source, but please cite your sources.
The public option is ridiculous. If it was possible to provide a basic level of coverage for all Americans in a sustainable fashion, then it would be fair to discuss the moral responsibility aspect of things. The problem is, this is not at all sustainable. I have yet to have one person explain to me how an insurance company (including the government) can stay profitable when they are forced to insure people with preexisting conditions. I don’t see how this won’t fuel incredible debt, while pressuring companies to regress towards the minimum coverage. The argument that the cost of coverage will decline as more people are forced to take part in insurance plans is flawed, because many of those newly enrolled people will drive up the average cost per customer since they have expensive preexisting conditions.
I realized tonight at work, out of the blue, that I had set up a sort of false dilemma argument, in that I failed to provide any reason why Jesus might indeed vote yes. Oops.
According to economist Jonathan Gruber of MIT:
The public option wouldn’t curb benefit payouts as much as private insurers by managing how people use health care, the CBO said. It would also incur higher costs because it would draw a “a less healthy pool of enrollees.”
“Attracting sicker people” and doing less “utilization management than private plans” would “put the public plan in a weak competitive position,” Ginsburg said.
[bloomberg.com]
I’m not against healthcare reform, but I do oppose the public option. I feel like the “moral” argument creates a false dilemma. There is no sustainable way to create a public option without suffering the consequences of an out of control enablement program that will bleed our economy for the rest of its future.
I think that in the case of a life-or-death issue—and I really do think that meaningful healthcare reform is such an issue for some Americans… I guess I don’t know. I understand that mathematically, despite various estimates from both sides of the aisle, a public option would operate at what may be a significant loss. The problem is that I can’t divorce the moral issue from the fiscal one: certainly the public option would “draw a ‘less healthy pool of enrollees’” despite the moratorium on private insurers refusing insurance on the basis of pre-existing conditions and (I might not be accurate on this) some sort of cap on premiums based on income, but then (and I’ll admit that I’m a little ashamed to be making this argument) what is the value of a human life? Are some lives simply too expensive to maintain? Can not the same biblical argument used to decry abortion—that life is sacred, that Jesus is the life, that murder is wrong—be used to defend those who are unable to pay for their own care? Personally, I think there’s a great argument to be made that The Church in America should be on the hook for caring for those disenfranchised by the system despite the financial infeasibility of doing so—aren’t we called to care for these people as we are able? (I extrapolate this opinion from Matthew 25.)
I understand the argument that it could become an “out-of-control enablement program”, and I don’t have an answer for you, because you may very well be right.
With that said, I’m happy that they are not allowing public funds to finance abortions. I feel like you can very easily Biblically defend the position that life begins in the womb, and unlike Roe vs. Wade, there is a realistic opportunity here to protect human life. In 2005 there were over 1.2 million abortions performed in the United States. That means approximately 1% of women over the age of 18 had abortions performed that year. That is hardly an epidemic, but still a troubling statistic.
I never said you couldn’t Biblically defend the position that life begins in the womb. I was pointing this out because people at my church were complaining that this bill would vastly increase the availability of abortions.
